A disease such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration causes a vision handicap, and vision is sometimes lost when the disease becomes worse. Usually, when light is applied to a retina, an optical signal is converted into an electric signal in a photoreceptor cell, and the electric signal is changed into a pulse signal in a ganglion cell and the pulse signal is transmitted to a brain. When the disease such as the retinitis pigmentosa or the age-related macular degeneration is generated, the photoreceptor cell is decreased or becomes extinct. For this reason, the optical signal cannot be converted into the electric signal so that vision cannot be obtained. In recent years, various trials for recovering vision have been proposed for such loss of the vision. For example, JP-T-11-506662 has disclosed the invention related to the generation of vision which uses a retina stimulating system.
The system serves to embed, under a retina, a microphotodiode having sensitivity to visible light and infrared light and to receive, into the microphotodiode, an image (video) amplified and modulated by a neuron net computer through a CCD camera, thereby obtaining vision.
In the retina stimulating system, however, the visible light and the infrared light are used for light incident on a photodiode. Therefore, it is necessary to cause the photodiode to be a complicated mechanism. Moreover, the system itself has a complicated structure.
In consideration of the problems of the prior art described above, it is a technical object to provide a vision regeneration assisting apparatus capable of assisting in vision regeneration without making a system structure complicated.